Shirt Painting & Bullet Journals

I enjoy creative exploration -  I've sampled as many crafts as I've been able to, and I continue to attempt new pursuits (this website is evidence of my first foray into website design) as well as developed some of the old ones.  By "developed" I mean "continued to do something poorly because it is enjoyable as an activity."  

Why don't we cultivate casual creativity in our culture?  It isn't profitable; however, the benefits are profound, long-lasting, and worthy of our time regardless of profitability. It turns out that (spoiler alert!) the world and life itself are both more infinitely complex and nuanced than the binary of whether or not a thing generates revenue.

In this [American] world, the vast majority of people are forced to shun casual, creative pursuits - we are crushed under the threat of poverty at every turn, with rising costs of living everywhere and stagnation of wages for the decade and a half: the entire length of time we've been in the workforce. It fucking sucks.  And this constant state of exhaustion and anxiety is largely where binge culture originated from, and why Netflix has become a cultural paradigm for entertainment in the modern world.  They drown our feeds in content, endless content, and so for the few hours that we as a people are given to rest between shifts, we can numb our senses with the onslaught of drivel.  We falsely equate mild entertainment with rest and relaxation, and continue grinding ourselves down further. We are too exhausted and too heartsick to do much else besides stare at the TV.

My initial response to this is actively cultivating the content that you choose to watch: a mindfulness about media intake.  Like weening off an addiction, it's about progressive small steps in the direction of moderation and improvement.  I'm by no means any type of expert, I'm just sharing what I've done to help make myself feel better about the bleak state of modern life.

Besides actively cultivating my media intake, I have worked on not being my own source of guilt for enjoying said media.  I remind myself that it is not shameful to relax, to enjoy entertainment, or to invest time in trivial-seeming interests.  The point of enjoyment should be personal and internal - to make joy and contentment out of one's own time.  This philosophy extends to my pursuit of non-profitable pastimes.

I believe there is an inherent creative sense within all of us: some urge to produce, create, to make and express something new and unique.  And I think that urge should be nurtured and cultivated regardless of potential to earn money.  This is not some groundbreaking emergent philosophy: it is a reality that has simply gone ignored by the economic world that churns and grinds us all.  Very similarly, but outside the scope of this topic on creative outlets, the concept of play has also gone unvalued and has wreaked psychological havoc on the working populace.

Ignoring the inherent, ever-present internal needs for expression and creative exploration detaches us from those fundamental tenants of our own humanity.  We are not machines to be powered on and off at command, to mindlessly perform tasks on precise schedules, to cycle between productivity and mindless rest.

I encourage everyone to do creative things badly, to explore, to try new things that look fun and that you fail horribly at - I encourage you to enjoy and savor any time you have to let your creative mind out to play.  Take up frivolous or immaterial pastimes simply to balance a professional life of ceaseless corporate tedium.